G.E.’s Latest Maneuver

[groovedaddy]

After decades of legal maneuvering, the General Electric Company finally agreed in 2006 to clean up the industrial pollutants it dumped in the Hudson River from the 1940s to the ’70s. The consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency required the company to dredge the river free of toxic sediment.

The first phase of the two-phase project ended last fall. The second is supposed to start next year after a period of study to fix whatever complications arose in Phase 1. G.E. has now asked the E.P.A. to give it another year in which to decide whether to proceed with Phase 2. If G.E. decides not to, the E.P.A. could still order the company to act or find some other way to get the job done, while holding the company liable for dredging costs plus triple that cost in damages.

G.E. claims that Phase 1 stirred up too much contaminated silt and that it needs time and data to figure out what to do about that. Its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, recently met with the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa Jackson, to make the case. New York’s environmental agency has found that “resuspension” of toxic sediments during Phase 1 did not significantly raise levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in fish and river water. Its commissioner, Pete Grannis, has implored the E.P.A. not to allow any more maneuvering by G.E.

The company will have to clean up its mess one way or another, so what advantage is there in another delay? Maybe it thinks that with time it can assemble more evidence favoring its preferred solution of letting the PCBs lie. Or it may be awaiting a bolt of political lightning — a Congress willing to overrule the E.P.A., perhaps?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/opinion/02sat3.html?th&emc=th